Montauk's Dock To Dish Catches On In Key West

Dock to Dish, Montauk’s own community-supported fishery, has been bringing fresh fish to tables for a little less than two years, and already the idea has been taken up in another coastal town more than 1,500 miles away.

Starting February 14, Dock to Dish will be offered to residents and visitors of Key West, Florida, at the Stoned Crab restaurant, which is owned by resort proprietor Chris Holland.

Mr. Holland and Sean Barrett of Montauk, the founder of Dock to Dish, share an ideology—that people should know where their seafood comes from and who actually caught it. The community-supported fishery will be the first of its kind in Florida.

Soon, diners and visitors to the Stoned Crab will be able to either order a fresh seafood dinner of fish caught less than 24 hours earlier in local Florida waters, or buy their fish at a new market Mr. Holland has set up. The restaurant has its own dock 30 feet away, where fish will be brought in just after they’ve been caught.

“From the moment I sat with Chris, I could see the look in his eyes and in the very way he spoke about it—he spoke the language and was totally motivated,” Mr. Barrett said about Mr. Holland’s desire to team up. “We’re trying to make changes to correct a broken system.”

Both Mr. Barrett and Mr. Holland, who are now business partners and will be sharing profits, are passionate about providing fresh fish and are unhappy about how seafood is provided to American consumers. They say that, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 90 percent of seafood consumed by Americans comes from overseas, and more than half of it is farmed and processed in facilities that are not inspected by any U.S. government agency, which leads to mislabeling. Some doesn’t even come with an expiration date, they said.

“They’ve been frozen and defrosted—it’s certainly not fresh, and the health benefits are called into question, and the flavor of it is called into question,” Mr. Holland said this week. “In a way, we’re turning back time,” he said of the partnership.

Mr. Holland said he grew up knowing the fishermen his family bought their fish from. “What we’re doing is based on the model, farm to table, know where your food comes from and eat it at the same time as it is in season,” he added.

Mr. Holland said the Stoned Crab will offer lessons for chefs on how to fillet fish properly using freshly caught fish. He said he wants the Dock to Dish principle to become a regionwide practice.

The partnership seemed to be serendipity, according to Mr. Barrett, since it all started when Mr. Holland picked up Paul Greenberg’s book, “American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood.”

Mr. Holland had already been speaking with his local commercial fishermen’s association and the Department of Agriculture to start his program.

“I wanted to make sure I wasn’t reinventing the wheel,” he said. “When we met I realized we shared the same passion for it … maybe the word is even ‘anger.’ We think it is ridiculous this country exports its very best fish and imports the very worst. It’s totally backward. We should be keeping our country healthy.”